


the Dead Letters Office

by orphan_account



Series: Bughead as Literary/TV Detectives [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU, Angst, Bring Bughead to Work Day, Co-workers to Friends, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, OOC, Riverdale, Romance, bughead - Freeform, post office au, varchie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 08:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14541114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Not all mail makes it to its intended recipient, so what happens to undeliverable mail? Several postal workers work as detectives to track down the people who never got letters and packages that were sent to them.ORAn AU where Jughead and Betty are postal detectives.





	the Dead Letters Office

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by “Sign, Sealed, Delivered” on the Hallmark Channel. Written for “Bring Bughead To Work Day”.

**.**

**Chapter 1**

Betty Cooper tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for the tall, skinny, dark-haired young man in front of her to give his coffee order to the barista behind the cart. She glanced at her wristwatch, she was almost running late for her first day of work.

He was in the middle of a telling a story about how his coffee maker had been confiscated by his boss. She cleared her throat and tapped him on the shoulder. “Could you please let me order my coffee? I’ll even pay for yours if you let me go ahead of you.”

He stepped aside while he continued to ramble on.

Betty sighed and shook her head. “I’ll have a very large iced latte and an Americano,” she said.

The man paused and looked at her, frowning. “What’s an Americano?” he asked.

“It’s an espresso diluted with hot water,” Betty explained as she paid for their drinks and put a tip in the jar next to the cash register.

“Usually I just have a black coffee with one sugar. . .”

“Well, it’s always good to try new things!” Betty said brightly as she took her iced latte and stuck a straw in the lid, she waved to him. “Have a good day!”

She glanced at her watch again and started to walk as fast as her high heels would allow her. She made it to the Riverdale post office just in the nick of time to meet her new boss.

**.**

“There’s been some sort of misunderstanding, I’m supposed to be working for D.L.O,” Betty said as she tried to keep up with Sierra McCoy.

“Right, the dead letters office!” Sierra said.

“No, direct line operations,” Betty corrected as she hitched her leather messenger bag further up on her shoulder.

“Well, we still call it the dead letters office around here,” Sierra replied.

“This is a mistake, I’m sure if you call Boston and talk to the PG, they can straighten everything out for you.”

Sierra stopped short and looked at Betty. “Right, I’ll just call the postmaster general after I get through talking to the President of the United States! You wait right here! Forsythe! I need to talk to you!”

“It’s you!” Betty blurted out as the guy from the coffee cart turned around.

Sierra looked between them. “You two know each other?”

“Theoretically,” Betty answered.

“Okay,” Sierra said. “Listen, Forsythe, I need you to train Cooper, here.”

“I don’t really have the time for that right now,” he replied.

“I’ll take away your refrigerator if you don’t,” Sierra threatened.

“You could just give me my coffee maker back if I do agree to take her on.”

Sierra sighed and then smirked. “Fine,” she agreed.

“Come with me!” he said to Betty when Sierra had disappeared.

Betty walked towards him and followed him into a less active part of the post office where two other people were sorting through mail.

“Archie, Veronica! Somebody else has joined our ranks! This is. . . what did you say your name was?”

“Elizabeth Cooper,” Betty introduced herself. “But you can call me Betty.”

“I’m Forsythe Jones, this is Archie Andrews and Veronica Lodge. Veronica is our research expert and Archie has a photographic memory.”

Veronica closed her compact mirror and put the tube of lipstick she was holding in her apron pocket. “And Archie can tell you who wrote the letter just by looking at the handwriting. What’s your specialty, Betty?”

“Technical stuff,” Betty answered.

“She’s probably here to put us online.”

“Jughead doesn’t like modern inventions like cell phones and Twitter,” Veronica explained. “He’s an old-fashioned sort of guy.”

Betty raised an eyebrow. “ _Jughead?_ I thought your name was Forsythe.”

“It’s a nickname, Miss Cooper. You have one too,” Jughead said. “I believe you just told us we could call you _Betty_.”

“Cooper!” Sierra barked as she came in and put a coffeepot down on the metal table. “You were right! There was some sort of mistake! Direct line operations is a thing but it’s in _Greendale_!”

Betty smiled in relief. “Well then, I’ll just be going then.”

Sierra held out her hand. “Not so fast, missy! You have to put a request for transfer in and continue to work here for six weeks until we approve you for transfer.”

Jughead nodded and went to his fridge, he took out a glass bottle of Coke and opened it with a bottle opener. He took a sip before going over to a basket of cards.

“What exactly is a dead letters office?” Betty asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one before. It sounds made up.”

“Well it isn’t!” Veronica answered as she fixed her pearls. “The dead letters office delivers letters and cards to people that have gotten lost in the mail and had no return address.”

For the first time since coming in the room, Betty saw the newspaper clippings on the fridge about lost loves meeting again for the first time in years and about siblings being reunited. “Oh! Did you do all that?”

Jughead shook his head. “My father did all that. I haven’t had a shred of the success that he had in this business. But I will keep trying.” he pulled out a bright blue envelope. “It’s a greeting card. Probably a _thinking of you_.”

Veronica sighed. “He’s so brilliant!”

Jughead picked up an envelope knife and slipped it under the flap. He pulled out the card, just like he had predicted _“thinking of you”_ was written on it underneath a Dalmatian with abnormally large eyes.

He opened it and cleared his throat. _“Let’s catch up! I dropped by Ebony & Ivory the other day and you were on a break.”_

“Ebony & Ivory?” Veronica repeated.

“I’m on it!” Archie replied, running to a thick pile of Yellow Pages.

“Or we could just look it up on the Internet,” Betty said as she pulled her laptop out.

“Ebony & Ivory is a record store in Stowe, Vermont,” Archie told them. “It’s owned by a Valerie Brown.”

Jughead handed the envelope over to Veronica who printed out the address in neat handwriting and stamped it before putting it in a chute and sending it up to delivery.

“Now it’s time for some _real_ work!” Jughead said.

Betty watched him carefully select a pink envelope with smeared blue ink. “You just choose them at random? You don’t have a system or protocol?”

“No system. No protocol. Not when it comes to the letters,” Jughead answered. “The letters find us! This one is addressed to Moose, no surname. Reply reads from Midge from Sweetwater River. The stamp is a rowboat, it was a limited edition, forty-nine cent stamp last spring to commemorate Riverdale’s centennial celebration.”

“Oh, Archie and I take a rowboat out all the time on the Sweetwater River!” Veronica said.

“So, it was probably a sentimental thing then,” Jughead added. “Archie, I need a consult please!”

Archie took the envelope and studied it. “Midge is a female nickname derived from the name Margaret. From her handwriting, I’d say she was in her early to mid-twenties who lacks confidence if her tentative strokes are an indicator. She wrote it in a hurry.”

Jughead opened it and frowned. “This was written in June. . . this is almost a year old. “It didn’t make it in the system. _“Dear Moose, I just wanted to return your button and explain about last night.”_ he stopped again and looked up. “I know what’s coming next. Letters like this coupled with articles of clothing are usually accompanied with sordid tales of too much to drink and sex.”

“So much for letters finding you,” Betty said.

Jughead rolled his eyes and continued to read. _“Dear Moose I wanted to return your button and explain about last night. Walking away. . ._ oh no. . . _”_ he trailed off again. “ _Walking away and leaving you standing near the river was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Except what I’m going to tell you next. I had to leave because I couldn’t bear to let you watch me die.”_

Veronica gasped. “Oh no!”

“Archie, I’m going to need another Coke,” Jughead said.

Veronica shook her head and looked at Betty. “This is serious. He _never_ has two Cokes before noon.”

Betty was beginning to think she had entered some sort of alternate universe with a kooky cast of characters far, far out of touch with reality. She sighed and shook her head, leaning against the desk, her laptop pressed to her chest as Jughead gulped his Coke.

“Okay, where were we?”

“I couldn’t bear to let you watch me die,” Veronica prompted.

“Right.” Jughead cleared his throat. _“The truth is I’m sick Moose and have been for a while now—“_

**TBC. . .**

**.**

**Author's Note:**

> I’m going to keep this one short and sweet but this is the most inspired I’ve been in a while. I hope you’ll drop me a line and tell me what you think. 
> 
> Until Next Time!


End file.
